Last week I had a great time giving two talks at Arizona State University (ASU) – one on strategy and analysis frameworks for marketing and CRM, and one on Entrepreneurship. This post will focus on the entrepreneurship talk and provide some of the resources (below) I shared along the way.
My theme was “From A’s in School to F’s in a Start-up” where the “F’s” were failures, friends and focus. The three “F’s” are less likely to get emphasis in coursework so that’s why I chose these challenges for the meat of the talk. I shared a variety of stories and my perspective on the current environment for starting a business to illustrate the “F’s.” In short, but without the color commentary:
- Failures are desirable – make them, and learn to adapt quickly.
- Friends and family end up caught up in the whirlwind of the fledgling business one way or another – consider the impact on them before making the leap.
- Focus is everything – narrow the business focus to sustain competitive advantage, and tune-out distractions. Nearly everything but the business is a distraction so choose time investments carefully.
Though “failure” may be the most referenced of these points among experts on entrepreneurship, I especially liked the emphasis that this Nike commercial provides on Michael Jordan’s failures.
During the talk I also provided resources (links) for the students to reference as they pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Here they are, with some of them oriented toward the Arizona market.
- Global Entrepreneurship Week – November 16 – 22, founders include the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship.
- Entrepreneurship at ASU – the hub for ASU and the Greater Phoenix community for many of the things needed to support entrepreneurship in Arizona.
- Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA) – all entrepreneurs need to market their business to someone and this non-profit’s membership is free for students.
- New Avenue – Greg Head’s site/blog – Greg is a successful Arizona entrepreneur with some great resources listed among his posts.
- Seeing Both Sides – Jeff Bussgang’s site/blog – Jeff is a VC (Flybridge Capital Partners) and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard. I presented Jeff’s facts about Harvard students’ entrepreneurship interests – they have shifted dramatically toward entrepreneurship over the past fifteen years.
Finally, just today I learned that ASU was recognized as one of the top universities in the country for their entrepreneurship development. They placed second on a list of top entrepreneurial universities by the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, led by the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). Congratulations to ASU!
I’m sure I left out many helpful resources, so please let me and the students at ASU know about any you recommend by adding them through comments for this post.
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